BioWare's Ray Muzyka on Eyeballs
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Muzyka was looking into my eyes as he said this during an interview last Friday at DICE. We sat across a table from each other and chatted about the future of storytelling in video games. It's an issue that both he and fellow doctor and BioWare founder Greg Zeschuk take seriously. "Our mission statement is to deliver the best story-driven games in the world," Muzyka told me. Key to that is delivering emotional moments. And one key to that for Muzyka is creating believable eyeballs.
"There has to be a couple of layers of reflection," he told me, recalling his medical days and rattling off parts of the eye and explaining how they might reflect light differently. He was feeling good about the eyes in his company's upcoming Xbox 360 outer-space role-playing game "Mass Effect," which is expected to come out in the middle of the year. He started talking about characters in the game. "They open their eyes, they look at you, they tilt their head and look you up and down, nodding their head." They don't even have to speak, but the player should be able to tell that they're alive. He turned the conversation to my eyes. "I know whether you're agreeing or disagreeing, whether you're skeptical or saying, 'Yeah I get it.' "
